


Dirty Laundry

by kittydesade



Category: The Good Wife
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 06:03:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Alicia finds solace where she least expects it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirty Laundry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gardinha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardinha/gifts).



Alicia's slender hands folded the clothes as though it were an ordinary day, left over right. Top over bottom. As though nothing at all had changed.

Refuge in the little things. These days, far too much had changed, had been changing, and she kept bumping up against the ways they had changed when she least expected it. In the small ways and even when people didn't mean to rub against sore spots. Sometimes especially when they didn't mean to, when they took too much care around her because of what happened with her family, now splashed all over the public page.

Left over right. Top over bottom.

Life was not supposed to be this way. To take unexpected turns. Everyone talked, had talked, before, about how she had been comfortably settled. They used the term comfortably settled, well-established, other words that sounded permanent. And then the scandal broke and she had been reminded that nothing was permanent, had to scramble for a hand-hold or a foot-hold or anything that would stand still, that she could stand on. She couldn't find a place to stand.

She thought she had, now. The past few months had been better than the first. The kids went to school. Zach and Grace were going to school, doing well in school, Grace was making a few friends. Alicia wasn't sure how much she approved of those friends, but...

"Mom?"

"Yes?" Focus. Please focus.

"I'm going over to Shannon's for a couple hours, she just got back..."

Grace didn't need to say anymore; Alicia nodded. "That's fine. Don't stay too long. Call me if you're going to be very much longer!" she called after her.

And that was another one of those things. The kind of friend Grace had now, the kind of friend that sprung from the situation they had put her into. Her parents had put her into this situation. She had met Shannon because their fathers were both in prison.

Breathe, Alicia. Left over right, top over bottom. Fold laundry.

Another of those small things that stuck her, jabbed her hard when she wasn't looking. When and where she least expected it. Damn him, for turning their lives upside down. Damn her for being gullible enough not to see it until it blindsided her.

The house was quiet now. Everyone out, running their errands, or at a friend's. She could have a glass of wine, if she wanted, to relax herself, but that had never been her vice, had it. All kinds of new understandings were coming to her now, the understanding of why a person turns to alcohol or drugs. Abusing pain medication to get rid of the headaches sounded awfully tempting. She could take to opiates, laudanum like a turn of the century woman whose husband was trying and unfaithful.

No, Alicia laughed to herself on thinking of it, and put the folded shirt on the pile. That wasn't her way. That wasn't smart, and it wasn't very tempting either. Just in the sense of being fed up with everything and needing some kind of comfort.

And, she realized about herself, with a thoughtful look and an upraised brow, the need to do something that broke the rules. Her husband got to break the rules and she had to play by them. Not that she did as often as she should, but it still galled. Why should he be the stud for running around on his wife, and the martyr in prison (which wasn't accurate considering his disgrace in the public eye) and she be the good wife, the dutiful wife, standing by her man? She was sick of standing by her man.

The problem was, she wasn't sick of her man, not so much sick of Peter himself, and that made things complicated.

Well, at least the laundry was folded.

Alicia patted the stack of clean laundry down, went through the house and deposited everyone's clothes on their bed. They'd put it away when they got back. She put her clothes away, easy motions, the swish-soft clack of the drawers as they opened and closed again, never overstuffed. Slacks and blazers hanging on their hangers, neat wooden hangers all in a row. Pinch at the front and the back, side seam to side seam. She remembered learning how to hang dress slacks properly as a young girl and wondered if she should teach her own children. Maybe it was just something you were supposed to pick up.

It was standing in the walk-in closet that did it. Surrounded by all the objects of banality and the illusion of her old life, a fragmented and imperfect illusion for all the things of his that were missing and all the things of hers that should not be there, Alicia felt herself breaking. It had been a little while since she had broken, maybe since that whore had started her campaign of destruction, but maybe she was due. She didn't know. Right now, she didn't know much of anything, she just pressed her fingertips to her forehead and tried not to cry.

And the doorbell rang. She had forgotten about that, forgotten that she had invited anyone over, or had she at all? Put on your game face, Alicia, square your shoulders. Be good, conform, be quiet. Be the good girl.

Kalinda stood on her doorstep, files in hand, and it was only then that Alicia remembered she had invited the other woman over to discuss the Lamarck case. "I'm sorry," she began, making her excuses. "I don't think..."

The other woman knew, though. Of course she did; Kalinda saw into people, was good at that, for the most part, it was what they used her for.

"It can wait," she said firmly, stepping in and closing the door behind her, putting an arm around Alicia's shoulders and steering her inside. "Tell me, Alicia. Tell me what's wrong."

Some tears, talking, and companionship later, it turned out that a glass of wine was exactly what was needed after all.


End file.
